My major chore at the cooperative where I live is as a shopper. One of my housemates and I make a weekly trek to a store and make an attempt to purchase enough staple goods to maintain a household of 11 for a week. As a community we are vegetarian and try our best to be as sustainable as possible. We try to buy from the Harvest Co-op as they are also a cooperative and we try to support other cooperatives particularly in the area. We buy organic if at all possible in our choices and when there is a choice to be made, buy as locally produced as possible. We have at least one share in a produce CSA and sometimes increase that to two shares. One of the housemates bakes vegan bread on a fairly regular basis and for the bread we buy, we try to shop at the Iggy’s bakery here in Cambridge. We are in the process of setting up an account to purchase many items in bulk quantities directly from a sustainably-minded wholesale distributor.
In the past, I had always tried to be a conscientious shopper but have become even more so in the past year and half since I have been doing the shopping for the house. The problems arise when we have items requested that cannot be bought locally produced or organic. We also try to get as much healthy variety as possible and still buy sustainably. Out latest issue has been centered on the prickly, succulent wonders commonly known as pineapples. We realized that it was imported as is most of the fruit we purchase this time of year. We feel like the purchase of fruits and vegetables is particularly important with vegetarian and vegan diets, so we make sure to buy only organic and free-trade. Sometimes shopping for such a large amount of people is difficult with many different people’s complaints and opinions, but we try to take any legitimate concerns into consideration. The first time we heard a complaint about pineapple being imported I explained that it was labeled as free-trade and we were just trying to bring in healthy variety as conscientiously as possible. Nonetheless we did not make any more pineapple purchases for some time. This week we bought another “free-trade” pineapple and the entire house was sent the following group of websites relating to all the issues around the problems with pineapple production in Costa Rica.
http://www.ecoearth.info/
http://laborrightsblog.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
http://www.globalissues.org/
Needless to say we will not be purchasing anymore pineapples, at least not unless we know someone is coming back from Hawaii and has a suitcase full of organic ones they’re trying to unload!
Hi Nancy,
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine the enormity of handling shopping for a bunch of people, their tastes and then trying to make the most conscious purchases. This must be quite the task! With your post I think you have raised a great issue with regards to pineapple production in Costa Rica. Pineapples aren't the only export in Costa Rica that are handled by dominating US based businesses and their deleterious effects on the local environment, economy and labor.
The few times I've visited that country, I've been stunned at the overwhelming amount of cleared land for agribusiness and its unsustainable monoculture harvesting practices. This is also a country that prides itself in being a forerunner in conservation, strict environmental laws and sustainable development. http://rainforests.mongabay.com/20costarica.htm As an english teacher in the country, even the students I taught were completely focused on the health of their environment. I recall leading an exercise with a class of 5th graders to rank various global issues ranging from poverty, wars, pollution, water quality, etc. Each group of students put environmental issues as the top priority - the global environmental crisis was ingrained in their perspective.
There is certainly a disconnect between an environmentally prideful country and acres of blue bags filled with pesticides over banana trees. My last visit, I bared witness to Costa Rica's African Palm Oil industry that is responsible for deforestation to the tune of agrifuels. http://thecostaricanews.com/costa-rica-investments-in-bio-fuel-animal-feed-and-grains/3770 There is a lot more to this story about palm oil and its increased production to meet the demands of alternative fuels, and the history of predatory fruit companies exploiting the natural resources of many Central American countries, and pineapples are just an example.
It is unfortunate that alternative fuel solutions by way of agriculture are being harvested under the same system of banana, pineapple and coffee practices. The palm oil industry was instituted in Costa Rica after the 1940 banana blight in Panama that cut profitability for the United Fruit Company. The African Palm tree also requires highly specialized skilled workers for its maintenance, toxins are used at its base to deter bugs and snakes, and the work conditions are labor intensive under extreme conditions (Firestone, 2006).
This comment might have gotten a little off track, but I think that it speaks volumes that once you begin to track where your food comes from, you get a bigger picture of what is going on in the world with regards to food resources, and the local people that are effected.
Firestone, M. (2006). Costa rica. Oakland, CA: Lonely Planet Publications.
Hey Nancy,
ReplyDeleteI cannot imagine shopping for that many people, as well as trying to make them all happy, while providing a good selection and variety. Does your house cook and shared meals or does everyone cook their own? Just curious because that can dictate a lot of what you buy as well. The pineapple story is said every way you look at it. I try to buy local but also have the problem of living in a winter wonderland, although I am going to try (if KP can answer questions when I get stuck) and can some of what I use all year this summer so that I have it on hand all year.
Thanks for the websites on the pineapple - the banana in Costa Rica is similar - as is the coffee. When I visited Costa Rica a few years back - we drove for four hours (not super highways) but none-the-less it was four hours and we never left the banana plantation we were traveling through. I was shocked. We stopped at one point where they had a harvesting station. We watched them bringing in bananas from the field and boxing them up for shipping. They were pretty green still right off the trees.
ReplyDeleteI remember that when I went to Puerto Rico they said they couldn't ship their pineapples because they ripened so fast that they couldn't get them out of the field and on a plane fast enough to be profitable. I guess you have to go to Puerto Rico to get their pineapples. But these days - they have figured it out I am sure.
When you shop for a group it is hard to get only the things you believe in as others may not hold the same values as you. It is always a good place for discussion. I hope you are having some "fruitful" ones. (I couldn't resist.)